Kahoolawe June 24-27

Today Kahoolawe is a barren wasteland populated mostly by thorny kiawe trees, the soil just dust and sand or hard packed earth. The mountains bear gaping craters ala the Grand Canyon with incipient hoodoo formations like those at Bryce Canyon. The rare green plant on Kahoolawe is a miracle and a testament to the tenacity of life if given a fighting chance.

Most people, however, don’t know that Kahoolawe has an acquifer (now cracked and rendering the water slightly brackish) with at least one well in the same area that once supported a “thriving Hawaiian community” back in the 1600’s. Areas that are just dry earth today are called “lua mahiko” (mosquito pit) because they were once lush and wet.

Most people know that the military used the island for bombing practice for fifty years (they’re the ones who cracked the acquifer) but most people don’t know—I didn’t know—that it was the goats, allowed to roam free on the island for a hundred years before them—that did the major damage. Goats—those tenacious eaters who don’t graze the surface as cattle do but dig deep for the roots and render the earth lifeless as they go—were the ones who made Kahoolawe what it is today.

The overgrazing created a vicious cycle: the lack of greenery brought less cloud cover to Kahoolawe which in turn contributed to the desertification of the island so that when the rain does come, the island is no longer able to capture and store the precious fresh water. Rather, the water runs down the island straight into the ocean, creating those gaping craters as it goes and contributing to the erosion that defines the landscape. It is the water ironically that erodes the island more than anything else today.

This weekend, we went to Kahoolawe as part of a Protect Kahoolawe Ohana monthly access trip. We harvested mulch and planted bags of the stuff along the coast high atop the island where they would potentially get some rainfall and germinate, but there is very little chance those plantings are going to get any rainfall; there is very little chance that any of those plantings will survive.

There is a catchment near the top of the island siphoning water along tubes to gardens. This area is definitely greener than other parts of the island but even here there are plants withered on the stem, frozen in mid-growth right where the sprinkler outlets.
Even the catchment does not provide enough water to nourish the few plants there.

It’s sad that we think of Kahoolawe simply as “the bombing island” as if the eleven-mile long and seven-mile wide island was disposable. Kahoolawe was (and is) an important navigational site to Hawaiians. At its highest point (almost 1500 feet) there sits an ancient “navigational chair” which offers a bird’s eye view of all of the channels between Maui, Lanai, Molokai, and Kahoolawe; ancient Hawaiian navigators stopped here to assess the winds and waters and plan their journey. It is from Kahoolawe that one gets the finest view of Haleakala (the House of the Sun), where on summer solstice, one can see the sun rise at the tip of Haleakala before it slowly makes its way down the right hand side of the mountain throughout the summer and fall months and makes it way back up the mountain during the winter and spring, as if Kanaloa placed these two islands there for time-keeping purposes. But we don’t remember these attributes of Kahoolawe; we remember the red dirt.

Kahoolawe for me is a cautionary tale, an example of what can happen to our resources if we don’t malama aina. We can—humans can, goats can—change our environment dramatically and if we aren’t smart about our actions, we can waste our resources—dig up all the greenery, crack our last acquifer—to the point where the land is no longer able to sustain us.